


Without as Within

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Community: scarvesnhats, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-25
Updated: 2005-10-25
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:27:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The autumn after Sirius falls.  Loosely related to the prompt for day twenty-five at scarvesnhats.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Without as Within

"Be still," he'd whispered, a hand on Sirius' thigh to quiet the restless shift of a foot, a leg. He'd cupped the jut of an elbow; offered patient smiles – spent a year at Grimmauld urging placidity, tugging Sirius to the couch when he paced, smoothing a hand down his spine in the night. "Be still," he'd whispered into the darkness of mornings still tangled with nightmares, speaking to tremors alight with memory.

He'd had no idea that stillness could rage until now.

Until now.

Until he stood in the gloom of Number Twelve and stared into autumn's fearsome defiance, tree limbs flung against a doubting sky. The house was silent, and this was his punishment - to stand by a window and feel the press of stillness against his throat, stillness he'd urged, stillness he'd craved to swallow the whispered footfalls of Sirius' agitation.

He had stillness now – a yawning absence that held him fast and plucked at his composure with cruel persistence, left him standing before a window still smudged with fingerprints, gazing into the furious glory of a reckless fall.

Bowing his head, he closed his eyes. Winter would come without as within. He doubted there was a spring to redeem him now.


End file.
